Friday Open Thread

11 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

1. Weathervane newsletter, from Win the Fourth

   What's in the Wind?

   Puerto Rico needs our help! Courtesy of the Longmont Area Dems, here are some things you can read to learn more, and ways to take action:

   • READ 9 Essential Things to Know About Puerto Rico's Humanitarian Crisis, here. 
   • READ The Jones Act…Strangling Puerto Rico, here.
   • READ Hillary Clinton urged the deployment of the hospital ship Comfort. here. 
   • READ Make Puerto Rico a State, here.

   ACTIONS: 

   1. Demand FEMA adequately addresses this tragedy by devoting the immediate people power and resources that Puerto Ricans need and deserve.
   2. Cancel Puerto Rico's $73 billion predatory debt. (If Puerto Rico became a state, imagine the boon to the US economy!)
   3. Call for a permanent end to the Jones Act (an outdated law that unnecessarily slows shipments to the island), so that Puerto Rico has the resources both for this acute crisis and for the longer rebuilding process.

   Senator Cory Gardner offices:
     D.C.      202-224-5941
     Denver 303-391-5777
     Pueblo  719-632-6706 

   Senator Michael Bennet 
     D.C.      202-224-5852
     Denver  303-455-7600

   Representative Ken Buck  
     D.C.      202-225-4676 
     Greeley 970-702-2136 

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   1. thank you, mj. 3 Million American Citizens, and Trump wants the bankers to get their money first.

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      1. Trump has waived the Jones Act requirements for the Puerto Rico crisis, one of the few good things he has done in office.

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         1. The Jones Act only prevents transport between US ports by other than US ships.  I doubt its presence or absence has anything to do with the failure to provide and distribute aid.

            This is much more the problem. 

            Puerto Rico aid is trapped in thousands of shipping containers

            A mountain of food, water and other vital supplies has arrived in Puerto Rico's main Port of San Juan.

            But a shortage of truckers and the island's devastated infrastructure are making it tough to move aid to where it's needed most, officials say.

            At least 10,000 containers of supplies — including food, water and medicine — were sitting Thursday at the San Juan port, said Jose Ayala, the Crowley shipping company's vice president in Puerto Rico.

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            1. I've been thinking about this all day. What they need are choppers that can land wherever there's a solid bit of ground. Now that the military's finally responding, maybe they can move that stuff to where it's needed.

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               1. Infrastructure was destroyed, but there has been a leadership vacuum in Puerto Rico for years. The Koch brothers' "Libre Initiative", which attempts to mobilize Latino voters to vote Republican, has the resources to save thousands of lives….if they choose to. Per Washington Post.

                  CHB, Trump has only waived the Jones Act for ten days. It won't be enough to save the hundreds who have already died, or will die from lack of clean water and food in the coming weeks.

                    Trump's initial reluctance to delegate resources for Puerto Rican relief, and to  lift the Jones Act for Puerto Rico, when he immediately lifted it to help hurricane victims in Texas and Florida, shows how incompetent and uncaring he is.

                  Remember when he said he'd visit Puerto Rico last Tuesday? He was too busy tweeting about NFL players to bother.

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2. Atrios, that Commie Pinko Socialist Threat to Democracy: 

   Politics is about power.

   Everyone who preaches the bipartisan-can't-we-all-get-along line is just defending the status quo of the people in power.

   A certain set of journalists hate it, but the development in US politics is the decades long re-alignment.

   The parties are no longer weird coalitions that make no sense.

   Even uninformed voters roughly know what Ds are and what Rs are.

   Call me a name, Russia-bots. But that won't negate the above truth. 

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   1. So, anyone who opposes your view point is a Russian sympathizer?

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3. Alarm as study reveals world’s tropical forests are huge carbon emission source

   The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions.

   Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States.

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4. Wow!  Bet you didn't see this one coming, huh?!?

   President Trump could save more than $1 billion under his new tax plan.

   https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/28/us/politics/trump-tax-benefit.html

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5. Well, at least it wasn't money from Russia…..

   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/obituaries/herbert-kalmbach-who-figured-in-watergate-payoffs-dies-at-95.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront

   "Mr. Kalmbach was briefly imprisoned and temporarily lost his law license for illegally raising vast bundles of cash, much of it furtively exacted from corporations and individuals."

   Pretty sad when the Watergate criminals look good compared to what goes on today.

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